Annette Russell
Special to THE DAILY

“Bungalow 2” is a very good book by Danielle Steel. It begins in a small Marin County, Calif., home where Tanya Harris lives as a happy stay-at-home mother of three children. She and husband Peter have been married 20 years. She writes articles, short stories and for soap operas in her free time and is very content.

As her twin daughters begin their senior year in high school and her son gets ready to go to college, she gets a call from her agent with a once-in-a lifetime opportunity.

She is offered a chance to write the screenplay for a major Hollywood movie for an amazing amount of money.

She discovers there’s a catch; she would have to leave her home and family for nine months to live in Los Angeles during the making of the movie. She could go back only on the weekends when she could get away.

At first, she tells her agent she can’t possibly do this, but her husband finally convinces her if she passes up her dream, she’ll regret it forever. Tanya agrees to the conditions and moves to Bungalow 2 in the Beverly Hills Hotel to begin her work on the screenplay.

At first, everything works out well despite one daughter’s major upset over her mother being gone and Tanya being homesick much of the time. At Thanksgiving, Tanya senses things have changed at home, and during her next visit, realizes the changes are real.

Tanya’s life changes dramatically at that point, and she and her children weather the storms together.

Tanya goes on to write more movies and accepts life’s changes with grace and learns to accept what life gives her. In the end, she finds happiness, with surprising twists along the way. “Bungalow 2” kept me interested until the end.

Email This Page